Chronicles of Darkness: Remnant Ghost Story
by bejammin2000
Summary: It's a story that begins with death. A death from before, as four teenagers that crossed the threshold of death before, find themselves crossing the threshold of worlds. From one World of Darkness to another, where those that go bump in the night are the antithesis to humanity. But these four, it's just business as usual. Work in Progress, Unbeta'd, let's see where we go together.
1. Chapter 1

" _Death is a door; you are the one with the key…"_

-Anonymous

To say the least, how they got here was without a doubt the worst thing that Mack Freeley had ever suggested in the short years that the teenagers of the Ashford Krewe knew each other. Honestly, the blonde seventeen-year-old high school athlete had done some dumb things before, but going into Stygia, past the outer barriers of the Underworld and into the Supernal itself… all on a quest to find a Lead Coin.

"I want to apologize." He finally spoke up. They were still in Stygia, having managed to get a small fire going with the meager supplies they brought with them. There was barely anything in Stygia, no natives, no wild-life, no anything to be honest, but a lot of dead trees that seemed to burn well enough. "This is my fault, I think. Us being stuck here." He looked over at his cohorts. Tyreese, who had his aluminum baseball bat with silver bands precariously close to him, the half-black teen looking at the fire with a disinterested look. Jane, the granola girl that managed to get the fire started properly. Annabelle, the quiet one who didn't speak unless she absolutely had too.

"Don't take it too hard on yourself, Freeley. Not like I have a better idea, yanno?" You could always trust Tyreese to at least try and say the right thing. And it was true, they were stuck in Stygia and the only idea any of them had was to try and swim upriver and see what would happen, but everything about that seemed like a bad idea. Unfortunately, it was the only idea the four of them had.

Which meant that as soon as they broke camp, with packs and bags sealed and ready for the swim… well, it wasn't technically swimming. The rivers in Stygia were a lot like the rivers in the Underworld, they weren't made out of water. But they still had a current, and while it may have looked calm and swimmable on the surface… the four soon found that it was anything but as soon as they stepped in, sucked under the surface of the water, deposited to parts unknown.

* * *

This was the third time in about three days that Mack Freeley had awoken, on his back, completely disoriented by the transition from reality to unreality. First from their home, Ashford, to the Underworld. Then from the Underworld to Stygia. Finally, from Stygia… to wherever they were now. Of the four man Krewe, he sat up and looked around. The good news, was that they were no longer in Stygia, but nor were they in the Underworld. Life… didn't do well in the Underworld, and the green trees were certainly alive and more importantly, real.

"Where the hell are we?" The trees back home didn't look anything like this, though to be honest, Mack didn't spend as much time out of doors as Jane did. Speaking of which, the blonde girl was stirring next.

"Hey, Janey…" He had a little nickname for each of the Krewe members. Annie, Ty, Janey. "Do any of these look familiar?" He gestured to the various trees, and the blonde took a look around.

"Sorry. I never seen anything like these trees before, nor…" She examined one of the trunks. "This does look like it was done by… I guess it was done by an animal, but I can't think of anything large enough." She looked over to Mack, shrugging slightly. She was their out-of-doors type and if she couldn't tell what the animal was…

"Werewolf…" Tyreese had woken up, who knows how long he had been up, but he was right behind the blonde, bat in hand once more, placing a hand in the long gouge. "Has to be, can't be anything else."

"You sure, Ty?" Mack backed down as soon as he got that… glare from the other man. "Right, right... you would." For the briefest of moments, he had forgotten how Tyreese Wade had died the first time, when he took a wrong turn down an alley back home in Ashford, and met his end at the claws of feral werewolf.

The stare down was only interrupted by the fourth member, the quiet redheaded Annabelle Rossi, tugged on the sleeve of Mack's jacket.

"What now, Annie?" He turned to look at her… then looked past her. "… Ty, I ever tell you I hate it when you're right?" Right at the forested edge of the clearing they were at… were several bipedal wolves… they didn't look like traditional lycanthropes, but Mack wasn't the expert on them, that was all Ty.

"I know you do." The kid has a smirk on his mouth, as he shouldered his bat, taking a deep breath as he manifested the Primeval Caul, Tyreese Wade and his Geist, the Rotting Trapper became one being. He took on a more feral look, his finger nails growing into claws, his canines become more pronounced. Honestly, he looked like the meeting of wolf and man to Mack, but he wasn't about to tell Ty that he looked like a sort of werewolf, that just wouldn't fly. Nor could he get a word in edge wise as the boy took off with a running leap, slamming his bat into the side of one of the bipedal beasts' head.

"Well, no stopping now." Mack said with a shrug, as the ethereal fire of a Pyre-Flame Shroud manifested over his body, the flames pulsing with his heart beat, even as he brought up a hand towards the one that Ty had attacked first, ghostly fire leaping from his hand as the Pyre-Flame Rage blasted the beast.

"They ain't werewolves." Was Ty's shout, near growling as he brought his bat against another one. The silver bands weren't having any effect, but the force he could bring to bear with the metallic object was enough to leave them staggered, one howling just before an arrow seemed to appear in its eye.

"They certainly aren't normal animals!" Jane shouted as she nocked another arrow in her bow and fired off another shot. Annie, of course, was staying back. She wasn't a fighter. Not like the rest of them and she was more of a medium then anything, dealing with ghosts and how to send them on their way… or convincing them to move on.

She never felt useless, and they never treated her as such, but she just wished she could do something more as she watched the other three fight the monsters. They could work as a team, and as long as she stood back, she didn't have to worry about them having to look out after her. But she was paying attention to the fight. She was the one that first noticed as the bodies dissolved as soon as they expired, the others too busy fighting to pay it any attention.

"You alright, Annie?" Mack finally approached her, the Squire's Saber in hand, three feet of smoldering rattan on an iron basket hilt, which he dropped, the weapon dissolving into smoke as it re-entered Twilight. She nodded, and pointed to one of the bodies that fell and started to sublimate.

"Well, I'll be damned!" The corpses were vanishing into… particles or some kind. "What the hell are these things, then?"

"They weren't afraid of people..." Jane was collecting arrows. "Which means that people should be around, in some manner. But… if that's the case..." She looked around.

"Where are the ghosts?" Mack had the same thought, finishing the sentence. If the creatures weren't afraid of people, that meant they had a history of possibly attacking people. Which means they may have killed people. This whole forest should be haunted, but the fact that it wasn't, did not bode well.

"We need to find out where we are. There has to be some kind of civilization, where ever we are." But… that lead to an even greater question, as soon as the athlete was finished talking. Were they actually anywhere on Earth? The obvious answer would be, of course. But they got here after exiting Stygia without any real control. That meant there was a chance, however small, that they weren't on Earth.

Perhaps they went and crossed into another Supernal realm. Or worse, more than one world was connected to Stygia (and the Underworld) and they managed to find themselves there because the Supernal was stupid like that sometimes. And of course, Death was completely universal.

"Wait, I'm gonna try something." Tyreese said, as he crouched down, taking a hand full of the soil. He let his soul expand, taking his senses as he established a Boneyard across the forest.

"Ah-ha! There's a hole in my boneyard, about half a mile directly north of us. Means it's man-made." The Primeval Boneyard, able to see all that which dwells in a forest, except that which was made by the hands of man.

"Well then, I know which way we're going now."

"And who nominated you to be our fearless leader, Freeley?"

"Boys! We can have your macho posturing and dick measuring after we get out of the forest inhabited solely by shadow monsters, please?" If there was one thing that Jane did not like, it was when Mack and Tyreese got into it. Mack was the captain of the Varsity Wrestling Team for Ashford High (as well as co-captain of the Track and Field team, and had a say in the Football team despite being just a Tight End), and took it upon himself to go and make leadership decisions.

All that being said, they did, of course, head towards the man-made structure directly north of the clearing they were in.

"I like it, from an architectural standpoint, it looks like some recreated Stonehenge with Minecraft..." Tyreese commented. The mixed youth's father was an architect for the largest firm in Ashford, and helped design almost every new building in the tri-state area back home.

"If it's supposed to be Stonehedge, maybe it's a similar purpose? Maybe we can find a ghost that can tell us what's up?" That Jane, ever the hopeful one.

Unfortunately, as originally stated, there were no ghosts at the temple, nor were there any people. There were, however, several pillars ringed on the inside of the ruined structure, empty.

"Well… plenty of people were here… lot of these foot prints are fresh. Maybe an hour, maybe a day." Tyreese, or more specifically, the Rotted Trapper, could tell the little signs of people having been here, which did mean that there was people around, obviously not in the infested forest, but it was a good start from there.

"So there's people, not the builders of Minecraft Stonehenge, but visitors? Why would you visit a place in the midst of a forest filled to the brim with slavering monsters?" He rubbed his chin as he figured out just what the hell were they going to do. It was in this thought that he felt a tug at his jacket.

It was Annabelle. She didn't talk unless she absolutely had too.

"What's up, Annie?" She was pointing off into the distance.

"Well, don't I feel like a super genius." Annabelle was pointing out a structure in the distance, past the forest they were in. It was a compound, with a large central structure.

"Onward and upward, honestly? What's the worst that could happen?" The other three looked at Mack, sheer looks of horror plastered upon their faces. Did he really just say that? Did he even know he just did?

"Dude, you're talking like the male lead in a second rate horror movie! Did you even hear yourself?" And, as if to punctuate the mixed youth's statement, a loud roar broke the silence.

"Nothing but yourself to blame there, Freeley. Go on, most fearless leader. You summoned it. You can take care of it." Jane motioned for the youth to march forward and face his destiny.

"The three of you suck…" He shook his head, as his smoldering sword of rattan appeared in his hand with a puff of smoke, as he rested it upon his shoulder. The weapon was an extension of the Giest that resided within his soul, and such it was an extension of his own self and did not burn him at all, as he went to see to the monster he seemingly summoned.

* * *

 **Glossary of Terms**

Bound: Human who has died and become bound to a Geist

Geist: One of the Little Gods of Death, a ghost so bound up in the way it died it becomes an aspect of that death.

Sin-Eater: One of the Bound that takes it upon themselves to help out ghosts and those affected/haunted by them.

Krewe: Group of Sin-Eaters that share a common territory

Underworld: The realm of the Dead

Stygia: The Supernal Realm of the Dead

Boneyard: Manifestation in which the Bound channels their plasm into the very ground itself, extending their senses into an area.

Caul: Manifestation where the Bound is possessed by their Geist, and becomes of one being.

Manifestation: Powers of the Geist bonded to a human soul manipulating the world of the living and the dead.

* * *

 **Authors Notes**

Hi. You ever had an idea so out there that it kinda changes the way you think? Inspired by two sources and you were like: You know what? Imma merge those two somehow and see if it works. And it just hangs onto you for days and weeks and months and then you just like: Alright, let's do this. Let's finally write it all down and let other people take a look at it and see if it's great or terrible.

This is my idea for that, a mixture of what I originally thought was a FotM series (to be fair, I thought the same of MLP, hohohoho, yes I enjoy being the wrongest man on earth) that when I finally got down to watching it, I thought it was an interesting universe and they had some great ideas and the next thing I know I'm browsing the RWBY section of and at that point, I realized I was coalescing this idea. This, if you read the summary, is a crossover with the World/Chronicles of Darkness, specifically the Geist: the Sin-Eaters game line.

It is, without a doubt, my favorite game line in the World/Chronicles of Darkness setting. I won't exactly sum up what it's about, but as the story goes along, you'll probably figure it out due to the characters talking about who and how they are. Anyway, drop a review, tell me what you think, and we'll see how I can improve.

Hold on tight, we're having an adventure.


	2. Chapter 2

_"Dem bones, dem bones gonna walk all over, dem bones dem bones they gonna walk all over…"_

-Dem Bones, an utterly inhuman Geist

The monster that Mack Freeley summoned through his utterly idiotic statement (despite the fact that he considered himself a fan of horror movies in general, but what are you going to do?) was the largest boar any of them had scene. It was similar to those not!werewolves that they fought earlier. The red eyes (4 of them), the large tusks, and the armor plates.

"Yeah, feel free to jump in whenever, guys." First rule of being a leader? Always be gracious towards your team mates. Or snarky. At this point, Mack was settling on the latter. But, he turned to his comrades for said snarky comment, and turned to face the monster that was…

"No way, is that a spin-dash?" He barely had the time to get his ever smoldering sword up to block the monster that… true to his exclamation, charged at him by rolling alone it's spine not unlike a spin-dash. Thankfully for the young man, the weapon was capable of taking the blow, as it was made just as much from plasm as it was wood, as a mighty crack resounded at the meeting and the beast managed a few more revolutions before coming down onto its feet.

"Watch out, Freeley! Don't need you getting yourself skewered on those tusk!" That was, of course, Tyreese shouting at him.

"I don't need any comments from the peanuts gallery!" Mack Freeley was in a fight unlike any other. True, he had fought his share of angry ghosts, insane geists, and abominable abmortals (also that vampire, but that was what the newspapers were calling him, and he wasn't actually a blood drink undead person), but fighting this boar on his own without the backup of his team was different It wasn't like the not!werewolves from before, which was nothing but savagery, there was some kind of intelligence behind this one. The armor plates didn't help, either.

Swing! Kerack!

Swing! Kerack!

Swing! Kerack!

It didn't matter how hard he swung the Squire's Saber, it just wasn't capable of getting through the armor. Fortunately, the armor plates weren't capable of breaking the Squire's Saber, but that was neither here nor there. He had to improvise. Already he was surrounded by the Pyre-Flame Shroud, but fire made for a grand offensive tool as well as defensive.

So with a thrust! The three feet of smoldering rattan that made up the body of the Squire's Saber, the Keystone of the Homeless Hedge Knight found its way in the maw of the monster he was fighting, just as planned. And just as planned? The fire of the Pyre-Flame Rage coursed from the armor, up the shaft of the blade and down the gullet of the monster. It burned from the inside out.

"Well!" The cocky youth pulled his weapon from the sublimating corpse. He would have thought that it would be from the Rage of the Pyre-Flame if he had not seen the not!werewolves dissolve into dust. "That, as they say, takes care of that!" No sooner than had the words exited his mouth did a pair of roars punctuate his victory.

"Go on, Freeley! You have a few more monsters to fight, don't'cha!"

* * *

"You know, any of the three of you could have helped me out there!" Mack was not a happy camper. They had stopped to eat, so close to the compound they had spotted from the temple. After the first boar, another pair had showed up and of course his friends and comrades told him that counted to his what was the worst that could happen faux pas, and it left him covered in scratches and cuts and one very large very purple bruise on his side.

Already, the cuts and scratches were fading, as they filled with milky white plasm, the ghost substance sealing his wounds. The bruise was a bit harder to bulwark, but not entirely impossible.

"But you did so well, Mack. Look at you. The great big strong leader of our Krewe, capable of facing monsters with gusto!" Jane knew that the best way to deal with Mack when he was in a rut was to play to his ego, worked like a charm, every time.

"Yeah, maybe… but I wouldn't be hurting so much if you guys maybe helped. We're a team! We work better as a team; how do you think we took care of that pack of whatever the hell those things were?" If you cannot convince them to work with you through the kindness of their own heart, try to guilt the hell out of them.

Sadly, it did not work either, the other three giving there would be leader a series of blank stares. He huffed indignantly, and finished his lunch.

"The three of you… _still_ suck!" With that said, he stood up. "C'mon, I want to make it to that copse of buildings before nightfall. Who knows how bad these monsters could get during the night!" With that said and done, the four had a hike of about an hour or so ahead of them. Thankfully there we no more monster attacks.

=Line Break=

"So what now, o fearless leader?" They had reached the cliffs near the buildings. There did not seem to be any way up save for the cliff face itself. Jane was the one asking, leaning against the cliff, arms crossed.

"We can't just climb up, could we? We don't have any equipment and the prospect of bouldering a cliff doesn't seem very attractive. There has to be an alternative way up." With only a few hours left of daylight, the Krewe had to surmount this obstacle. Either the hard way (bouldering the cliff face without any equipment and risk death and dismemberment) or the easy way (find an alternative route).

As the prospect of trying to climb didn't sit well with any of the teenagers, a search began for an alternate route, finding a misused trail that switch backed up the side of the cliff. It was… a hell of a hike to the top, burning the rest of the daylight, however, they were out of the haunted forest and as they were now on a plateau, the four near collapsed. Their backs hurt, their legs hurt, everything hurt as they were tired and worn out.

You could bulwark a lot of wounds with plasm… but it couldn't deal with pure exhaustion, so thusly the group made camp. A fire was soon started, their tents set up, and dinner was starting to cook, simple as boiling water for dehydrated hiking meals.

Fearless leader, Mack Freeley was leaning against his bag, looking up at the stars started to come through the night sky, placing a cigarette between his lips and reaching for his lighter. It was a small thing, a gold flip lighter that someone had taken the care on one side to engrave the simple legend of Fuck Communism. It was no mere lighter, as the young sin-eater flipped it open and flicked the striker, a blue flame soon alighting. It housed the ghost of a young man who first had the lighter, only to die in a fiery death before he was to be shipped off to Vietnam, only to be consigned to his prized possession decades later through guile and trickery by the Sin-Eater that held the lighter.

Mack Freeley used it because it was a lighter that always lit, no matter wind or rain and required no fuel. He breathed in the smoke, the cherry on the tip of the paper tube burning brightly before he exhaled a wreath of bluish smoke. "We need to get our story straight. Who knows who owns this place. Government? Corporate. They're going to want to know how we got on their land, so we're just a bunch of campers. We got lost and needed to use their phone because our cells ran out of juice. Sound fair?"

He got nods from the other teenaged Bound.

"I think…" Jane started, as dinner was finished rehydrating and heating. "I think we should take stock of what we have. Who knows where we are or how long it'd take to get back home. We could be here for days, weeks even!" A good suggestion and they took stock of what they had with them.

Annabelle Rossi had packed with her three changes of clothing, her laptop computer, a very important first aid kit, and … a one-piece bathing suit.

"Annie, this isn't a trip to the beach, you didn't need to pack that…" Mack shook his head, the quiet girl shrugging.

Jane Seager had much of the same. Three changes of clothing, her bow and quiver, a few bottles of white gas, and a lantern that could use it.

Tyreese Wade had with him, once again, three changes of clothing, several bottles of water, his baseball bat, a water purification kit (given to him by Jane so he could hold on to it), and his lucky ballcap.

As for Mack Freeley… he was the worst of the bunch, however. Against everyone's better judgement, he brought his hollow body guitar…

"It's for morale purposes!" He claimed as the other three gave him dirty looks. But that wasn't all! They also found two cartons of cigarettes!

"What're the chances of me being able to find my brand in the Underworld!?" He protested. And finally, buried amongst his changes of clothing and miscellaneous camping gear and his trench knife… a gallon zip top bag filled with joints. The raven-haired young man coughed.

"Lemme guess, these are also for morale purposes, right?" Jane tossed the bag at the boy, shaking her head. "Only you, Mack Freeley, would think it proper to bring one hundred dollars' worth of marijuana on a spelunking trip to the underworld. What do you have to say for yourself!?"

The man thought deeply and thoughtfully, before he shrugged. "I planned on sharing once I broke it open…"

Silence reigned amongst the four, only the crackle of the fire providing any noise.

"You damn well better!" Was the blonde's reply.

"Moon." That was Annabelle. She didn't speak often (or at all, to be honest), and as the other three looked at her, she was pointing to the sky.

"Annie, it's just the… well, fuck me sideways and hear me scream…" The four were gazing upon a moon, yes. But the moon wasn't the one they knew, it was in fact… shattered, yet still managed to maintain its orbit. This… wasn't what any of them expected. Sure, they were blasted from Stygia to some forest they didn't know, but they always thought that perhaps, perhaps they were still on their world. The monsters didn't mean a thing. Ghosts were real. Vampires were real. Werewolves were very real, as Tyreese could attest to.

All this meant… was that there was no easy way to go back, getting here was by chance to begin with, and even then, required that they fight their way back into Stygia, and that almost cost them their minds and souls.

Ty turned to Mack and held up a hand. "I would like a joint now, please? I think we can all agree that now? Now is a great time to be high!"

Unknown to the four, as all three indulged in the illicit activity, they did not see that the forest, and even the cliff they were camping upon, had several disguised cameras… cameras that recorded their fight with the not!werewolves, recorded the 1v3 fight against the huge boars. And the people that were reviewing the footage of those fights were going to have a hand in the future of the four young Sin-Eaters.

* * *

 **Author's Notes**

Hey, welcome to chapter two of a Remnant Ghost Story. So far, we've been following the new comers, those who found themselves here. Next chapter, we'll finally meet actual RWBY characters! Particularly Ozpin and Glynda. Worth mentioning that they missed initiation by about a day, or so. For good reason. I wanted them to think they were on earth before they discovered… well… everything.

Anyway, little tidbit of being Bound to a Geist. The Geist wants to live vicariously through the human it's bound too, hence why little things like Bulwarking, using plasm to fill in wounds suffered is a thing. They take way the hurt, they leave the pain. Geist's also makes medicine more effective, the plasm helping it along. And the Geist is more than willing to take all the worst bit of drugs and alcohol and the like, and leave the human they were bound too all the good things.

So expect the four Sin-Eaters to do things like… smoke, and underage drinking, and other things they probably shouldn't but probably will because they can.

Also, expect Mack to be a bit of a man-whore. It's in his damn name, the pun I mean. Anyway, leave a review, fav, and I'll see you next time.


End file.
